For overall system performance we use PCMark Vantage. This is run in both x86 and x64 mode to give the best indication of performance. However, with the AT3IONT-I we wanted to look at some specifics. These extra tests included the Productivity Suite and the TV and Movie Suite. We wanted to see how well the AT3IONT-I was able to handle those tasks.

Finally we see something that shows the ION has an upper hand. With the ZOTAC we were not able to complete the entire PCMark x64 suite. For some reason the x64 suite of tests would error out; and that was that. With the MCP7A (ION) based board we were not only able to run the x64 suite, but we see some numbers that are much higher than we saw with the ZOTAC.

Productivity Suite

The productivity suite is important to our testing as it shows the ability of the Atom based AT3IONT-I to operate as a productivity device. This is important as people generally do not want a fully blown computer that just does movies and TV; at least not yet. So the AT3IONT-I Deluxe will also need to maintain its ability to operate software like Word, Excel and even Power Point for a little while.

Even at stock speeds the DDR3 touting AT3ION does great at productivity. It easily outperforms the newer Atom D510 CPU in our productivity testing.

TV and Movies Suite

This suite of tests measures how well your system can handle transcoding and video playback from different sources.

The ION shows off again with much better scores for the Movies and TV suite. It looks like you should be able to use this for entertainment and some office work. We are fairly sure that the much more powerful 9400M was a lot to do with the numbers we are seeing here.

For synthetic gaming tests we used the industry standard and overlockers bragging tool 3DMark Vantage. This is a test that strives to mimic the impact modern games have on a system. Futuremark went a long way to change from the early days of graphics driven tests to a broader approach including physics, AI and more advanced graphics simulations.

3DMark Vantage uses the DX10 API in addition to having support for PhysX. As we are no longer using an NVIDIA GPU for testing (at least until we can get a GTX 4xx card) you will only see the CPU based PhysX results in the scores. For testing we use the Performance test run.

Unlike the Atom D510 based ZOTAC NM10-DTX, the AT3IONT-I Deluxe was able to run 3DMark Vantage. Interestingly, the performance numbers here are about equal to what we see with the 890GX and the Clarkdale HD GMA. Certainly this is food for thought.

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